


The Empty Chasm of Light

by nikatsu



Series: A Belief in Vision [3]
Category: EXO (Band), SHINee, f(x)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 18:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1789423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikatsu/pseuds/nikatsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Patient’s Bed 504—Jung Soojung, age 22. Time of death: One-oh-fifteen, April 19, 2013."</p><p>[the final installment in the <em>A Belief in Vision + A Sign of Weakness</em> universe.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Empty Chasm of Light

**Author's Note:**

> x-posted in Asianfanfics and LiveJournal.

 

The first thing she notices when she comes to is the air. Or the lack of it as she blinks her eyes open. Everything is white, cold, boring, where she is—the walls seemingly closing in on her as she turns her head left and right. She is in a hallway with a wall of windows some place. It is eerily quiet; save for the soft, steady beeping of machine [ _“We need to stop the bleeding and intubate! Give me that tube now!”_ ] she cannot fathom coming from somewhere.

She looks out at the windows and sees nothing but darkness and rain. None of the moon and stars. No streetlights or cars driving by. [ _“She’s losing too much blood. Where the hell is she bleeding from?”_ ] She sniffs and smells nothing but stale, dry air. Closing in into her lungs in a way that would have normally suffocated her by now—but she feels perfectly fine. [ _“She’s going to VFib!”_ ]

That worries her, so tentatively she takes a step.

And **instantly** wishes she didn’t.

 _The mysterious beeping intensifies._ And then doesn’t. Shuts off.

“Shit.” She whispers, head dipping down with palms up for inspection and then back again to the windows and sees… _nothing_.

[ _“Patient’s Bed 504—Jung Soojung, age 22. Time of death: One-oh-fifteen, April 19, 2013.”_ ]

 

* * *

 

(( _Soojung wakes to see bright, white light from above her. Alone and lost as everything comes back to her in waves._

 ** _I’m dead_** , _she thinks, blinking back nonexistent tears burning behind her eyes. I’m dead._

_She wonders if this is how it’s supposed to feel. To die so young… is it supposed to feel so surreal? She feels alive. She can feel herself breathing, can feel blood coursing her veins—and yet she can do neither. **Is it supposed to be like this?** _

_She finds herself walking forward aimlessly. Passing doors with numbers and names that mean nothing to her until her feet stop just outside of one. She lifts her hand up to touch the wood of the door and instantly she is inside the sterile room, staring down at her own body. Her body fills with something akin to fear, but she doesn’t feel it bubble up the way she expects it to. Instead, all she can think about is how horrible it would be for her family to see her this way: ghostly pale and with cuts and scratches lining the periphery of her once flawless face. Her hair is wet and stringy and she immediately wishes she had washed her hair first before going out and **dying** but then she stops—chuckles, sobs, curses at herself for being so vain at the most inappropriate of times._

“I’m dead,” _she says aloud and the idea begins to stick._

_She feels alive though. **How is that fair?** _ **))**

 

* * *

 

 

The next thing she knows she’s in another room, staring down at another body.

Taemin lies in his hospital bed, cut up and bandaged, breathing heavily through a ventilation tube. He looks so… broken, all purple, black and blue in places she wishes she didn’t have to witness. His eyes are wrapped tightly with white gauze, blocking out the bright light from the hospital ceiling. It is almost a merciful thing for him to be devoid of the dazzling brilliance of the light in the room. She is dead and even it hurts her eyes, and she thinks that he doesn’t need any more pain. All he needs is sleep. _To close his eyes and never…_

The emotions—real this time; biting and painful—well up inside of her and overflows.

 _Close his eyes and never wake up?_ “No, he can’t die,” she lets out loudly, sobbing. “You can’t die, Taemin. Please don’t.”

It falls on deaf ears. Dead and alone in the room, she knows logically that no one can hear her. But when Taemin twitches just a bit, Soojung thinks that he must have heard her.

He must have, she knows because she believes it.

“I’m sorry I was such a brat, Taemin…” Soojung tells him so sadly, her knees give underneath her and she collapses to sit on the edge of the bed. She closes her eyes and tries to recall what it was they were fighting about before all of _this_ happened. She doesn’t remember much but she knows, _knows_ that it must be important because _it just has to be if I’m dead like this and you’re hurting_.

“Why do we always fight?” She asks, more to herself than to him. And as she watches his chest lift and drop, Soojung is comforted that at least he is breathing the way she wishes she did too. No matter how many times they disagreed on things, death is never something she wished on him. Or anyone for that matter, but especially him. She doesn’t know if she could have taken it… to find him dead and not find him elsewhere, like her, _after_.

She doesn’t want to hurt herself and him that way. She has to believe that he doesn’t want that too.

But the question is out before she even thinks it completely through.

“Why do we hurt each other?”

Her mind supplies her an answer in rapid succession— _Because he’s sick of you and your childish ways, your jealousy for his focus on his studies, how little he values the things you values, the dates you set, the promises you want him to make—_ but none of them feel right. Soojung isn’t stupid. She knows that Taemin, despite his best intentions, do not care for her the way she wishes he did. But he does, do, care.

Soojung knows because she believes it.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up hours later, coughing and gagging as the medical personnel removes the tube from his throat before helping him to breathe on his own.

It’s horrible to watch him come back to the world, kicking and screaming as the pain from his injuries sets in. The pain stifling his very breath as he chokes, heaving oxygen in and out as though it is _everything_ but is not ever enough. Soojung finds herself wanting to push and hit the people around him to do something quickly. _Save him! Help him!_ But her fists meet only empty reactions and the ache hurts even more knowing that nothing she does now will mean anything in the real world.

It’s practically hours later after when he calms and only the doctor explaining to him what had happend is left in the room that he finally speaks his first word since—“ _Soojung?_ ”

Soojung has heard him say her name a thousand ways before, all of which are catalogued in her head. This is the first time she’s ever heard it being said in such a detached, defeated tone. The syllables fall so heartbreakingly sad from his mouth that she feels… empty.

The doctor pauses and when Taemin turns his head, fists clenched and eyes still bandaged from the light, Soojung knows what he does too.

 

* * *

 

**((** _Taemin is zonked out on morphine when another doctor comes in. This one is female, slender and tall—beautiful by all accounts, even as she looks like she’d been through hell warmed over. Soojung understands why. It’d been a long night for her as well. The seconds ticked by in the same span of normal hour. Everyone that had come in and out of Taemin’s room were bone-tired and it would make sense that this new doctor would look no different._

_But still, Soojung feels on guard as she steps into the room in half-a-dozen long, uneasy steps, hair tied in a low ponytail though you could see that it was clumped in knots.  The embroidered name on her coat reads_ Im Yoona, MD – General Surgery _and is achingly familiar. Her eyes puffy and red as though she’d been crying for hours…_

_Soojung wonders why and opts to wait as the doctor comes closer, watching from her seat on Taemin’s bed. She isn’t too sure if she should continue listening once she does speak, the words spilling out of her in waves and interspersed with disappointment and defeat._

_After all… what is the good in hearing how you died?_

“I… I’m sorry. For not saving her. I tried, believe me, I did. There was so much blood and I couldn’t find her the source of the bleed in time. She was already breathing so shallowly when we got her out of the car. I’m… I’m sorry for causing this. I didn’t think when I… I’m so sorry. So sorry…”

 _The beautiful doctor dissolves into wrecking sobs that Soojung feels like doing as well. The pain in her heartfelt apology ringing in her ears as she watched her wrap her arms around herself and cry. She almost reaches out to her when Taemin’s doctor—the tall, stoic one—comes in and pulls the young woman into his arms_.

“It’s not your fault, Yoona.” _He whispers and Soojung immediately knows that he feels as guilty and defeated as the woman he’s holding. His tone soothing as he brings his lips to her hair and breathes._ “It was an accident. It’s not your fault.”

 _The caress of his mouth on the young woman’s hair is loving, and even Soojung knows that the action was no fluke to comfort a friend. And when the doctor finally stills and looks up, the light in her eyes tell Soojung everything that she needs to know._ “It is, though. It is.” _She says, pulling away from the arms holding her up. She is unsteady on her feet but her posture is rigid, closed off, and the man is left to step back. The sobbing young doctor immediately becomes competent and sure before her eyes, standing straight and speaking business-like after wiping her eyes dry._ “I’ve already contacted the girl’s sister and parents. The sister will be here by tomorrow morning but the parents won’t be in until Thursday. Have you handled Patient Lee’s parents?”

“I have. I’ve also contacted a friend of the patient’s. He should be here in a few minutes.”

“Good.” _The woman nods but avoids his eyes._

_He takes a step further back, fist clenched. Defeated._

_Soojung sits transfixed at the display in front of her, wondering how people could be so in love and not be willing to say it._

_She understands though. She_ wonders _but she does_ understand.

 _Looking back to Taemin’s prone figure on the bed, Soojung knows why the three words have to remain secret._ **))**

 

* * *

 

Their parents arrive separately, days apart. Reacting the way she expects them to. There is anger and sorrow. Yells and tears.

It is Jongin, Taemin’s best friend, who handles them. Calming and comforting them at the same time while papers are processed and laboratory results are explained. He is unnervingly steady during the whole ordeal—informing everyone who mattered in each their lives of what happened in a quick, almost painless fashion. Jongin takes in all the outrage and grief and gives care and sympathy back.

Soojung wonders how he can hold himself together when she’s always known him to be on edge. Always tittering over a cliff of whatever situation he finds himself in.

She stands beside him when her sister, Sooyeon, arrives again on the day her parents come and marches straight into Taemin’s room. She watches as Jongin closes his eyes as her sister wails at her boyfriend, breathing heavier and heavier as each second passes. And when Sooyeon screams “She loved you!” at Taemin, Soojung is more than shocked to find Jongin break down in heaving sobs.

“I fucking loved her too.” He whispers, clutching at his knees as he falls to the floor, shaking terribly. “ _I fucking loved her too_.”

Soojung feels tears fill her eyes, and she wishes— _more than anything_ —that she could touch him. Comfort him in the way he had been doing to everyone she’s ever cared about. She’s never really known him enough before but she thinks that she does now. _“I fucking loved her too”_ resonates in her head and the pain burns in her chest again.

She drops her forehead on his trembling shoulders and wraps her arms around him. Non-existent she may be, she wishes he can feel her… even just once.

Jongin is still heaving his breaths, though his tremors eventually stills. She likes to think that it is her doing but knows it couldn’t be so she keeps her arms around him even as he looks up and rests his head against the wall.

Anything she does _now_ means nothing in the real world.

All she _now_ is not enough to ease the pain but she’ll try anyway.

_“I fucking loved her too.”_

She’ll try because he isn’t just Taemin’s best friend, he is hers too.

 

* * *

 

The nurse assigned to Taemin is pretty. Her hair was dyed a sort of chesnutty reddish-brown and short, reaching only her chin and flaring outwards. She was cheerful in a way that was much more endearing than it should be. Soojung actually grins for the first time since settling in Taemin’s hospital room when the nurse introduces herself. Partly grateful for the distraction (watching their friends file in and have nothing to say was grueling and it still hurt to watch Jongin keep to himself, speaking in a clipped way that wasn’t who he was) and partly curious to how at ease the nurse’s presence feels to her. She doesn’t know why that is but Soojung thinks it helps her (and Taemin) breathe easier. That was enough reason to let the stranger in.

The nurse is bold, wrapping a hand around Taemin’s arm as though she’s known him forever and speaking in a tone that was almost _this side_ of ecstatic.

“My name is Choi Jinri. I’ll be your nurse.” She says, grinning from ear to ear that Soojung just has to copy. “We’ll be good friends, Mr. Lee.”

Soojung snorts at this but believes it. And as Taemin nods, doubtful as she expects him to be, she knows he’ll come to believe it too.

 

* * *

 

**((** _Taemin gets nightmares more often than she wants him to have._

_Soojung watches him toss and turn, limbs flailing as though he was reaching out for something (or someone) that isn’t there at all._

_He cries her name sometimes, tears leaking out by itself from the corner of his eyes. The syllables of her name cracking into the sounds she’s come to hate since he first did so when he woke up from the accident. The kind of pain he is in when he is lost in his dreams makes her feel like dying over and over again, because no matter how strong or detached Taemin tries so hard to be when he is awake—his true emotions come unhinged in the darkness._

_The sobs he makes in his sleep tell her everything she’s always wanted to hear from him._ (“I’m sorry, Soojung. I didn’t mean to, Soojung. I wish I could have been more, Soojung. Forgive me, Soojung. I miss you, Soojung. I love you, Soojung.”)

_When he wakes, all stock still and silent, Soojung keeps on clinging to him—curled up at his side and responding,_

“I’m sorry, Taemin. I didn’t mean to, Taemin. I wish I could have been more, Taemin. Forgive me, Taemin. I miss you, Taemin. I love you, Taemin.”

 _She wishes it was enough. But it isn’t._ **))**

 

* * *

 

“Take care of him for me, please.”

Soojung says this each and every time the nurse Jinri comes in the next month Taemin is detained in the hospital. Smiling as she flits in and out, chattering all the while Taemin tries to ignore her presence. Soojung knows Taemin enough to her his interest in the young nurse has evolved to something more and while it should hurt—

_… to see him react to another’s touch,—_

_… to think that he’d move on eventually,—_

_… to know he’ll love someone else; love **her** better—_

All she wants is for Taemin to be loved the way she loves him.

“Love him for me, please. It doesn’t have to be today, or tomorrow. But love him like I love him. Please. Make him happy.”

She thinks _this_ is enough. It has to be.

 

* * *

 

**((** _Soojung isn’t the type to question the universe but when one begins to live one’s life as a ghost, parts of one’s belief is bound to change. She thinks that time and space are odd concepts once you’re dead. She can blink once and come to find her surroundings completely changed in the nanoseconds it takes for her to shut her eyes and open them. She could be in Taemin’s room one second and then be out in the stark white hallway once again, all by her lonesome. Sometimes she finds herself floating by Jinri, following her through her rounds until she reaches Taemin, while other times she’s by the pretty doctor’s side—the one who tried to save her—to watch her work and try to move on from her guilt._

_The doctor is still as lovely as ever but she’s a lot more demure now, Soojung thinks. Keeping to herself and avoiding Taemin’s doctor all the more. It makes her wonder what happened to them before the crash and what her death and Taemin’s accident had done to their relationship. She wonders why she finds herself following these strangers, looking into their lives and caring for them as though they meant something to her when she was alive._

_She’s dead, this is a fact she’s accepted. So why them? And more importantly, why is she still here?_

“You’ll hurt your head, thinking like that.” _A voice says and she almost jumps out of her skin if she had any left. She is usually very much alone when she in the hallway, but today as it turns out is not the same as yesterday._

_Soojung turns and finds herself faced with a blond-haired boy with narrowed, mischievous eyes. He looks to be around her age but she wasn’t too sure what to make of him. After all she is dead, haunting a boy’s hospital room. A ghost. **What the hell is he?**_

“I’m a ghost too, duh.” _He answers, reading her thoughts and she really does jump back in surprise._

“I’ve never seen you before.” _She replies, brow crinkling at him. A smirk lights up his face and Soojung finds herself bristling at the half-amused, half-exasperated look he gives her. It was a look that Taemin would give her sometimes, when he talked about the mechanics of a so-and-so engine and she would ask an inane question he’d already answered minutes before. It was a look that made her feel very small, very stupid and she was neither of those. She wasn’t even human anymore._

 _The blond starts walking, passing by her before speaking close to her ear,_ “You haven’t seen me because you hadn’t needed to until now.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” _She asks, whirling at him._ “What do you I hadn’t needed to see you until now?”

“Exactly what it means, Soojung.” _He counters, looking back at her. The white of the room made his blond hair look even brighter, practically platinum in the light. It hurt her eyes to look at him, but she couldn’t look away either._ “You haven’t wondered why you were here until now. So here I am.”

“What are you? Some kind of spirit guide?”

“You could say that.” _He shrugs, grinning at her. Offering up his hand, he motions for her to follow him further into the white. Soojung doesn’t particularly want to but her feet moves anyway. She’s by his side in flash before she’s able to speak again_.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To where you should be.” _He tells her, grabbing her hand and dragging her down the hallway. The room begins to change around her, filling up shapes that were not there before into actual objects. She recognizes them as they slowly fill in color and when she blinks again, she knows that she is already days into the future since her last visit in the living world._

_She takes in the look and smell of Taemin’s dorm. Everything is familiar and new here. The desk is still riddled with screws and bolts and parts of machines she’s given up long ago to understand. Shoes lines up the wall near where the TV sits on top of a dresser Taemin and Jongin had taken apart and made into some sort of bookshelf/cabinet. Bottles of waters litter the floor next to a chair where a jacket had been slung over haphazardly. And finally Taemin is where she expects him to be, sleeping soundly on his bed in the very early hours of morning—completely healed and bruise-free._

_Everything is in order, and yet at the same time changed._

_Soojung turns to the blond again but finds him missing so she looks back down at Taemin. It’s in that moment she knows the ‘ **why** ’to her questions._

_She wishes she didn’t have to. But she knows now what to do._ **))**

 

* * *

 

Taemin refuses to acknowledge her and that’s OK. Soojung expects as much from a person who only believes in what he can measure. Taemin is a logical being, undeterred by things done in affection. It’s one of the things she found attractive about him. She liked that he was certain about everything he did. He didn’t believe in hesitation, in guessing, or in luck. He believed in himself and what he knows. He knew who he was and what he wants in life, and by being with him Soojung knew who she was and what she wanted in life.

Granted she is neither here nor there. And every day she greets Taemin with a smile, she feels herself falling farther and farther away from where she ought to be.

With a smile, Soojung tells him—“You’re going to have to fess up sooner or later. You can’t keep ignoring the fact that you can see me, Taemin. I’m not leaving anytime soon.”—but all he does is turn back at her and bury his head in his books.

She knows that he knows what he has to do but he ** _doesn’t_** believe.

“Taemin, you have to.” She whispers to him in his sleep. “Sooner or later, you have to believe.”

 

* * *

 

**((** _Her guide tells her to call him ‘Sehun’ and the name rings a bell in the back of her mind._

_It doesn’t matter though because Soojung decides he is as strange as he look. Like a mushroom that pops up out of nowhere and when she least expects him. He starts coming around more often when she’s out following Taemin around. Taemin doesn’t see him like she does but it isn’t like he acknowledges her presence either so she can’t be sure if he actually does or doesn’t._

_But it doesn’t matter, really, it doesn’t. Because it’s nice to have someone around… even if it’s just a weird spirit guide hanging around._

“Your boyfriend’s a tough nut to crack.”

“Well, he’s been through trauma. You can’t expect things to just be okay in a snap.”

 _Sehun shrugs, pointing his thumb at Taemin’s back._ “He seems to think he’s okay.”

“Yeah…” _Soojung agrees, tired all of a sudden and worried._ “And yet I’m still here.”

“You _can’t_ leave if someone still wants you here.” **))**

 

* * *

 

The pain is more obvious in Jongin.

Soojung worries as she watches them hanging out at a bar late one night, her brow crinkling at the amount of alcohol Jongin keeps ingesting. He throws each shot back in one gulp, eyes screwed shut with every burn the liquid takes down his throat before opening them and be lifeless still. He is worse off than he was at the hospital when he was visiting, all rough and cutting whenever Jinri’s name comes up in his and Taemin’s conversations.

Taemin is trying, despite his own unease—his eyes darting from where she is standing beside him and then at Jongin slumped over on his stool. She can tell he doesn’t want to be rude, because that isn’t who he is, but his patience is also already paper-thin.

Jongin’s question catches her offguard—“Don’t you miss her at all?”—and she sees Taemin begin to shutter. Taemin turns away, flushed and responds just as cuttingly as Jongin had spoken to him, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Soojung knows a fight is about to begin when thankfully Jinri appears by her side. The anger quickly dissipates at her arrival and for that Soojung could not be anymore grateful for her presence. Taemin makes a quick quip of how stubborn Jongin is being by calling her ‘Sulli’ and when Jinri jokes and laughs in response, Soojung laughs too.

It’s quick but the way Jongin’s eyes flit to Jinri (at _her_ ) and how his shoulders tense makes her wonder if he heard her too. So she stops laughing to step closer, aware of Taemin’s eyes catching her movement from the periphery and lays a hand at Jongin’s back. He doesn’t ease and that hurts because he doesn’t deserve to be in so much pain…

Taemin looks away as her spirit hovers over Jongin. She thinks he’s acknowledging her now because he can’t handle his best friend right now as he orders another shot of whiskey and gulps it down. Not when both them are still so angry at each other. At themselves.

She wishes it were easier.

(It could be, though.)

 

* * *

 

**((** _Soojung hates Taemin the most when he’s being belligerent. Pointedly ignoring her when he should be listening._

_He and Jinri are beginning to crumble because he refuses to believe. The good of who he is with Jinri chipping away with every denial he convinces himself. He’s hurting himself and Jinri and Soojung all at once and yet he does **nothing** still._

_He’s so fucking stubborn I could scream! She thinks, wanting to throw something at him as he lies to Jinri about being fine when he is clearly not._

“Tell her about me. Tell anyone.” _Soojung pleads with him but he keeps silent._

 

“Jinri,” _he says but the next part is for_ her, “Stop it.” ))

 

* * *

 

It’s awful once the dam breaks.

Soojung’s heart breaks for Jinri as she rushes out of the hospital room in sobs, leaving Taemin behind to fight back his own tears. She steps towards him after his doctor leaves hours later, just as his shoulders begins to shake and reaching for him as the tears began to flow in rivulets to his dismay.

He doesn’t freeze when she touches him, curling behind him on the white hospital bed as he cries. He is too tired to deny her any longer.

So he holds on, gripping the (nonexistent) hand on his chest as the sorrow overwhelms him. Soojung lets him cry as hard he needs, feeling his heart as it beats beneath her palm. She lets him cry for himself, for Jongin, for Jinri and for her—and it’s good because this is what he ought to do. He needs to grieve. He needs to accept that everything in all of their lives has changed.

“That wasn’t what I meant when I said you should tell her.” She tells him later, her cheek pressing against his chest.

“Then what?” he says aloud, the notion clear.

She reaches up to brush his hair off his forehead and watches him close his eyes for one quiet moment. “She had no part of this. **We** ’re to blame.”

Taemin understands, he does because she knows him despite himself. She knows him inside out and he knows her too. He wishes he didn’t and it is exactly this that makes her strong enough to spell it out for him as her own tears come, “… and even though you say otherwise, you haven’t accepted the fact that I died. That you loved me the same way I did in your own way but was never able to tell me. Because you didn’t believe in love then, at least until she came along. You fell for her because she made you believe in things I could never make you consider when I was alive.”

Soojung presses a kiss against his chest and chokes out. “You have to let me go, Taemin.”

“I never wanted you dead.” He tells her and she knows it’s as close to **I love you** as she can get from him now.

Her body feels lighter now as she raises her head, looking down at his glassy eyes. The room slowly fading out of color, like sketch being slowly erased, as she watches him for a long, long moment.

“I know.” She nods finally, cupping his cheek to press a kiss on his lips. It is the softest of kisses she will ever have with him but it’s OK. She’s dead, she accepts it. And now he does too. “Tell her about me. Tell anyone.”

 **Don’t forget.** “I love you, Taemin”

He closes his eyes and breathes. _I love you too, Soojung._ “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

**((** _When she comes back to, she is in the empty room of light and sees Sehun leaning against nothing. He smirks at her as she moves to stand, holding out a hand,_

“Ready to go?”

 _Soojung shakes her head._ “Could I have… one last stop?”

 _The blond raises an eyebrow at her, “_ Okay… to where?”

“Jongin.”

“He wasn’t the one holding you there.”

 _She knows that but,_ “He _fucking_ loved me, did you know?” **))**

 

* * *

 

Their steps are better in sync of each other now that she’s dead than when she was alive and Soojung thinks that it’s a pity.

She wonders if she had known Jongin better, would any of this have happened? Would she be walking down this path with him, her footsteps not making a mark on the cobblestones? Would she be alive and well? Happy? Thinking of **_what if_** ’s is useless but she can’t help herself from imagining them while she is by his side.

She daydreams of play-fights and ice cream dates. Of cheesy love-notes passed in between her course classes and visits in between each of their part-time jobs. She daydreams about how he’d call her ‘Krystal’ because it’s his name for her and how she’d let him with a mocking glare because she secretly does loves it. She daydreams of burrowing into him and sighing, knowing that he fucking loved her beyond death and—

Jongin stops at her grave stone, sliding down against the granite.

“Taemin loved you, you know. He did. He’s an idiot but he did.” She smiles at him when he chuckles. A tear escapes his eyes as he leans his head against the stone. He sniffs, quickly adding, “I wish I told you, Krys. Before. The rejection would have suited me fine if it meant that at least you knew.”

Soojung sits beside him, resting her head on his shoulder—much like she had done in the hospital practically eons ago. Her surroundings begins to fade out of color again as they breathe in sync. In and out, shades fading from color to grey to white…

“I love you, Soojung.” Jongin speaks to the sky and she knows he’s going to be alright.

A breeze brushes past them as she replies,

“I love you too, Jongin.”

 

* * *

 

**((** _Soojung is walking along the light with Sehun when she hears her name being called._

_She stops for only a second to close her eyes, only to open them in time to see red posies being set on her grave as a pretty young nurse sits down on the grass. Her hair is longer now but still in the same chestnut color she likes, her grin wider than she’s ever seen it before._

“Hiya, Soojung.” _Jinri says, leaning back against the stone,_ “The boys left me to play video games all day. Mind if I hang out?”

 _Soojung laughs, the wind agreeing with her._ “Sure… why not?” **))**

 

 

_**finis** _


End file.
